Law Commons^™

The Tragedy Of (Ignoring) The Information Semicommons: A Cultural Environmental Perspective, Robert Lee Cunningham

Robert Cunningham

The second enclosure movement critique is familiar theoretical territory for scholars concerned with the creeping maximalist impulse of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Just as the first enclosure movement relating to real property created controversies concerning social contract and the advertised efficiencies of private real property, so too these concerns are echoed within the context of IPRs. This paper employs the emergent discourse of cultural environmentalism so as to diagnose and resolve IPR issues evident within the information environment. Cultural environmentalism borrows, begs and steals analytical frameworks from environmentalism, such as those relating to the commons, public choice theory, welfare economics …